QUARANTINE BLOG # 183

September 29, 2020

Continuing yesterday’s “Signs of the Times:”

At an Optometrist’s Office: “If you don’t see what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.”

In a Non-smoking Area: “If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and will take appropriate action.”

On a Maternity Room door: “Push.  Push.  Push.”

In a Veterinarian’s waiting room: “Be back in 5 minutes.  Sit!  Stay!”

In the front yard of a Funeral Home: “Drive carefully.  We’ll wait.”

And the best one for last: Sign on the back of a Septic Tank Truck: “Caution –  This Truck is full of Political Promises”

👉  With apologies to one of the blog readers who drinks chocolate milk and eschews coffee, National Chocolate Milk Day was Sunday – September 27.  In the late 1680s, an Irish-born physician by the name of Hans Sloane invented the chocolatey beverage. 

When offered the position of personal physician to an English Duke in Jamaica, Sloane jumped at the opportunity.  While in Jamaica, Sloane encountered a local beverage.  The locals mixed cocoa and water together.  Sloane reported the flavor to be nauseating.  After some experimentation, the doctor found a way to combine cocoa with milk.  The creamy combination made it a more pleasant-tasting drink.  Years later, Sloane returned to England with the chocolate recipe in hand.  Initially, apothecaries introduced the concoction as a medicine.

Oh, we also missed National Chocolate Milkshake Day – September 12.  Sorry.

👉  Last Tuesday I told you about The New York Times’ 1619 Project, an attempt to rewrite our nation’s history.  Oprah Winfrey is going to develop it for film and television.  It’s being incorporated into curricula from grade schools to universities through the Pulitzer Center.  The lead author, Nikole Hannah-Jones, won a Pulitzer Prize in the commentary category (the center and the prize are unrelated).

Now Hannah-Jones and the Times are quietly taking back the project’s most controversial claim: that 1619, not 1776, was America’s “true founding.”  President Trump recently attacked the 1619 Project as representative of left-wing, anti-American bias.  Hannah-Jones says that right-wingers were distorting the project.  She said on CNN recently that the 1619 Project “does not argue that 1776 was not the founding of the country.”

The problem is that this is simply a lie.  The original magazine package, in both the print and online versions, said: “The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery.  It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding ...”

Along with other major historical facts and interpretations which the Project got grossly wrong, 1619 wasn’t the first year African slaves came to our shores, and 1619 wasn’t particularly significant beyond being a convenient 400 years prior to the publication date. 

One commentator, Jonah Goldberg, says the reason the Times is backpeddling is to deny President Trump and his fans a talking point.  Maybe there is varnish on the Times’ version.

👉  One more quote from Tom Brokaw’s excellent The Greatest Generation: “The women and members of ethnic groups who were the objects of acute discrimination even as they served their country remember the hurt, but they have not allowed it to cripple them, nor have they invoked it as a claim for special treatment now.  They’re much more likely to talk about the gains that have been achieved rather than the pain they suffered.”

I repeat my recommendation that this book be used in middle school and high school history classes.

👉  I once overheard someone turn down a bottle of Coca-Cola saying, “The only time I drink Coke is when I dilute it with rum.”  Well, that rum and Coke drinker is in the minority because Coca Cola is available in every country in the world.  In North Korea and Cuba it is called a “grey import,” coming in from another country without the direct permission of The Coca-Cola Company. 

How about some other interesting “coke-isms” you may not have known? 

From 1886 to 1959, a 6.5 glass or bottle of Coca-Cola was just 5 cents. 

When Coca-Cola was ready to import to China, they chose the name “Kekoukela” which sounds similar phonetically, but translates to “bite the wax tadpole.”  So the name was changed to “Kekoukele” which means “tasty fun.”

Coca-Cola was made in a colorless version for importing to the Soviet Union.  The regular stuff was seen as a symbol of American imperialism, but Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, who was introduced to it by General Dwight Eisenhower, became a big fan of Coke and appealed to the company for a non-political version.  With President Harry Truman’s endorsement, Coke responded with a colorless soft drink presented in a clear glass bottle closed by a white cap with a red star on top.  A rose by any other name?

👉  Some things strike me as strange – the label of this Campbell’s soup can for instance.  As I was fixing my lunch yesterday I wondered, “Why would anyone put stale noodles in chicken noodle soup?”

👉  As a general rule, I don’t give to panhandlers.  For instance, when I was taking groups to Russia, I told my fellow travelers, do not, under any circumstances, give money to beggars.  If you want to give, give the money to the church we are visiting for their ministry to the poor.  Many of the beggars you see are professionals working scams with cohorts that will see where you keep your money and rob you.  There is a whole society of people who are taught to beg almost from the day of their birth.  But I have a friend who, if he saw the fellow in this picture begging, would drop money in his tin cup.

👉  Lessons from Stone Waterpots # 2.  The story of the turning of water into wine does not tell us about something Jesus did once and never does again, but of something which He is always doing.

You can read the whole story here:
https://classic.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+2%3A1-11&version=NKJV.

The importance of this miracle is not that Jesus once upon a time turned some stone jugs of water into wine.  God wants us to see that whenever Jesus comes into a person’s life, there comes a new quality which is like turning water into wine.

Without Jesus, life is dull and stale and flat.  When Jesus comes into it, life becomes vivid and sparkling and exciting.

Without Jesus, life is drab and uninteresting.  With Him it is thrilling and exhilarating.

Remember that John wrote his gospel many years after Jesus was crucified.  For decades he had thought and meditated and remembered, until he saw meanings and significances that he had not seen at the time.

When John told this story he was remembering what life with Jesus was like, and it is as if he said, “Whenever Jesus came into a life it was like water turning into wine.”

In this story is John saying to us: “If you want new exhilaration, become a follower of Jesus Christ, and there will come a change in your life which will be like water turning into wine.”

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